Girls basketball rankings

Here are this week’s girls basketball rankings. There isn’t a lot of movement. Auburn Riverside moves up a notch to No. 2 after last week’s victory over Snohomish, which slips from second to fifth.

Moses Lake and Kentwood — coming off that impressive victory in the Nike Northwest Invitational — each inch up a spot. I’m reallly looking forward to Thursday’s showdown between Auburn Riverside and Kentwood.

Mercer Island’s win over Bainbridge last week kind of threw me into a quandry. I had MI on the “others” list and thought it might take the team a little longer to get into full swing, due to some injuries. The Islanders did lose to Mount Tahoma, a 4A team that lost quite a bit from last year’s state team. And I still think Bainbridge is going to be very good.

It’s always hard to rank one team over the one that beat them, but in this case I dropped Bainbridge from fourth to eighth and put Mercer Island in at No. 10, bumping Bellevue (which is 2-1 with a loss to 4A inglemoor).

Prairie and Meadowdale are now 4-5 (Prairie posted two impressive wins over the weekend against a pair of ranked Oregon teams, Thurston and Sheldon). West Valley of Yakima stays in despite the 18-point loss to Moses Lake), but slips to No. 6. Holy Names isn’t punished by a an out-of-state loss to Post Falls.